Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools
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Re: Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools
#2Measuring token usage as a productivity metric is like measuring keystrokes. Don't mind me, just over here rolling my face on the keyboard for an hour so I can take Friday off...
...except each keystroke has an associated cost, the sum of which may equal or exceed my salary.
Re: Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools
#3Measuring token usage as a productivity metric is like measuring keystrokes. Don't mind me, just over here rolling my face on the keyboard for an hour so I can take Friday off... ...except each keystroke has an associated cost, the sum of which may equal or exceed my salary.
Insert photo of Simpsons drinking bird while homer sleeps here.
Re: Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools
#4This reads more like it's a single employees gripe than a real thing that's happening. They're not using the metrics in performance reviews, and it's a new AI tool that AWS probably wants legitimate usage data out of.
That said, if you can't figure out how to use AI in a software job you should look into it. Not using AI at this point is a lot like not using CAD as an architect.
Re: Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools
#5Can't you just, wire your agent into a Python script and have it infinitely check its own work? That would hit the metrics, but do nothing useful.
Hell, throw a Tarot reading in the middle of the loop so the agent has non-deterministic behavior too.
https://github.com/trailofbits/skills/tree/main/plugins/let-...
Amazon management wants to play five-dimensional chess? Play Balatro instead.
Re: Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools
#6I was thinking about this recently. I tend to run my AI at low context because the documentation states that they degrade with higher context usage.
However I see tons of people on LinkedIn with ways of backing up context, not wanting to lose context, etc.
This seems like another way the system is being misused. Higher context usage also uses more tokens. I suspect you get worse (and slower) output too than a dense detailed context.
Re: Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools
#7Measuring token usage as a productivity metric is like measuring keystrokes. Don't mind me, just over here rolling my face on the keyboard for an hour so I can take Friday off... ...except each keystroke has an associated cost, the sum of which may equal or exceed my salary.
What's nuts is how many intelligent people— people who would say "of course 'LOC written' is a terrible measure of developer productivity, of course only a dysfunctional company run by morons would do that"— have immediately bought into this. Amazon has token use mandates, I've heard Google has token use "leaderboards", friends at startups say they all get graded on tokens used. It's like watching your sensible, levelheaded friend go completely off the rails; collective madness.
Re: Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools
#8This reads more like it's a single employees gripe than a real thing that's happening. They're not using the metrics in performance reviews, and it's a new AI tool that AWS probably wants legitimate usage data out of. That said, if you can't figure out how to use AI in a software job you should look into it. Not using AI at this point is a lot like not using CAD as an architect.
It is being used in performance reviews, source: recent Amazon SWE.
They also use a bunch of dumb metrics like, total PRs submitted, total comments made on PRs, etc. To the point that, there are multiple heavily used internal tools to game these metrics. Eg, auto-comment LGTM on any approved PR. Thus, making the metrics even worse than they would have been prior.
Re: Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools
#9I joked about this on HN a few weeks ago and I find it funny that we ended up here already. Goodhart's Law in action.
Re: Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools
#10Someone pressuring to do something at work gives off creep vibes.
Is that in the contract to use AI tools? If not, then what are they on about.